FIRE BREAKS OUT AT AIRPORT SERVICING BHAIRAHAWA Kathmandu, 4 Nov.: Flights were disrupted for nearly one hour Saturday at at the Gautam Buddha Airport servicing Bhairahawa. Fire broke out on grassland inside the airport perimeter disrupting incoming and outgoing flights. Firefighters of Nepali Army, Nepal Police, airport and Siddharthanagar Municipality put out the fire. Nnnn RULING MADESH MORCHA ALSO OPTING FOR ELECTION Kathmandu, 4 Nov.: Ruling Madesh Morcha is also p[ting for constituent assembly elections and a formal is being taken by the next meeting of the morcha or front, Prakash Timilshina writes in Nagarik. Maoists lading the government, NC and UML have opted for elections. Maoists game up its demand for assembly reinstatement. Nnnn MANIFESTO OF JANANATI PARTY PROPOSED Kathmandu, 4 Nov.: In yet another move towards party formation, a taskforce formed by cross-party Janajatis to constitute an alternative political force has finalised the proposed organisation’s manifesto, modality, guidelines and other necessary Documents, The Kathmandu Post writes. The taskforce has resolved most of the outstanding disputes of party formation with the target of declaring a new force within “a few weeks”. Resolving erstwhile differences on leadership and party modality, the leaders have also narrowed down most of the differences on the party’s ideological principles. The taskforce has agreed that the party will be guided by socialist principles, but the debate on whether to locate Marxism in it goes on. Leaders formerly of the CPN-UML, led by Ashok Rai, are standing strong for Marxist socialism as the guiding principle while others oppose it. Chaitanya Subba, who heads the taskforce, said the work is ‘almost’ over. “Leaving some ideological differences aside, most of the issues are resolved,” said Subba. In case the leaders failed to reach any conclusion on resolving the ideological differences, some alternatives have been floated. While a section wants the leaders to focus more on ethnic issues than political philosophy, others have asked not to mention political ideology or propound one on its own like the People’s Multi-party Democracy practised by the UML. Yet others have urged announcing a party by accepting a diversity of factions based on ideology.“Even parties like Nepali Congress, CPN-UML and UCPN-Maoist have factions. A party with divergent factions could be an alternative in case we failed to draw consensus,” said Ang Kaji Sherpa. The divergent views on party leadership have also been resolved. The party would not go for multiple chairpersons or revolving leadership, a view floated earlier by some sections. Leader privy to the developments said the prospective Social Democratic Pluri-National Party would be led by Ashok Rai. Having represented the disgruntled faction of the Nepali Congress, Kumar Rai is likely to be the second-in-command. “There are no differences over the issue of leadership. There is common understanding on the leadership from top to bottom,” said Sherpa. The remaining differences will be finalised by a closed-door meeting of leaders representing three groups—deserters from the UML and the NC, and intellectuals. “The top leaders representing various factions will settle the remaining issues. Everything will be decided within some days,” said Sherpa. Nnnn SLOW PROGRES IN EXPANSION OF NT TELEPHONE LINES Kathmandu, 4 Nov.: Nepal Telecom’s (NT) plan to aggressively expand its service across the country by adding 10 million GSM mobile lines is moving at a snail’s pace. Now, the state-owned company’s plan to start distribution of new mobile lines from the first quarter of 2013 seems virtually impossible, The Kathmandu Post reports.. Huawei Technologies, a Chinese telecommunication equipment vendor which is working on 4.8 million lines under Package B of the project, is making slow progress and NT is running out of mobile line stock. At the same time, the NT board is taking more time to take a decision for signing agreement with Huawei for Package A — 5.2 million lines. “Even if Ericsson rejects Package A, the board is unwilling to issue a letter of intent (LoI) to Huawei soon, citing legal issues,” said a high-level NT official. The official said since the matter was related only to Ericsson’s forfeiture of bid security, the board should decide about issuing the LoI to the Chinese vendor at the earliest to speed up work. Ericsson’s writ petition to stop NT from seizing $4.6 million bid security is pending in the Supreme Court. Rejecting the package, Ericsson had said it would not be able to work at such a ‘low cost’. Prior to this, ZTE Corporation had refused to sign a contract for the package. The 5.2 million lines package is targeted for Central, Eastern, Far Western and Mid-Western development regions, and the 4.8 million lines package is for the Kathmandu valley and Western development region. The existing system capacity of NT allows it to distribute only 5.5 million lines (4.5 million lines from ZTE Corporation-installed network and 1 million lines of Huawei in the Far Western region). The Nepal Telecommunications Authority report says NT has already distributed over 600,000 additional lines beyond its original capacity. “Huawei has been paid the first installment of $18 million, but it has installed only around a dozen network sites that will hardly be able to offer service for 15,000 new subscribers,” said the NT official. The officials added the NT board, top officials and other government officials associated might also cancel the Package A and expand services adding capacity of Huawei’s existing network in the Western part. After eight months of delay, NT and Huawei had signed a contract for Package B at Rs 6.75 billion ($ 85 billion) last June. As per the contract, the Chinese vendor is responsible for completing installation of all equipment under the first phase within October, making it possible for NT to start distributing new lines within December this year. nnnn